The proposed cutbacks in services at New Zealand Post are perhaps the strongest signals yet of the radical changes happening in society as a result of the spread of digital technologies.
The state agency is contemplating curtailing mail deliveries from six days a week to three, and will look to reduce staff accordingly, as it seeks to ride out steep "irreversible" drops in postal revenue.
Even 10 years ago, such a proposal would have been unthinkable. But the realities of the world in which most of us now live are such that many may find it hard to counter the logic of the initiative.
The proposal comes in a letter from New Zealand Post chairman Michael Cullen to State Owned Enterprises Minister Tony Ryall.
Under a 1998 deed, the state-owned postal agency is required to run a six-days-a-week delivery service for 95% of New Zealanders.
That, says Mr Cullen, is no longer tenable.
The board had exhausted almost all "short-term fixes" and needed to start making fundamental changes in its operations, he wrote.
Mail volumes were expected to drop about 40% to just over 600 million items a year in 2018.
The primary culprit is, of course, email and other cost-effective forms of instantaneous, or near-immediate, forms of communication, including smart phones.
The digital technology on which all this is based heralds a social revolution that has been described as the most profound since Gutenberg's invention of the printing press.
How information is processed, inscribed and exchanged is at the heart of it and is transforming the diverse breadth of modern industry, communication and cultural endeavour.
The media, for example, is being profoundly changed by the ability of electronic and digital platforms to provide information and news instantly.
Book publishing and retailing likewise is being forced to consider its business models by the availability of online wholesalers and the growing popularity of e-readers.
Downloading has permanently altered patterns of music, film and video distribution, sales and consumption.
Likewise, new technologies are presenting alternative learning models in education. Across the board, industry is changing.
But the prospective cuts to postal services hit home in a way that some others, perhaps, do not.
The daily arrival of the post, particularly in rural communities, has not only been a lifeline to the greater outside world, but an exemplar and guarantor of comforting certainties.
History and tradition have deemed the mail to be a critical part of our lives. Now we find it is not so essential after all: the irrefutable evidence seen in its sharp decline.
In certain respects this is regrettable.
Written and posted communication often (but not necessarily) requires of the writer greater care and formality - qualities that are all too frequently absent from hasty emails, for example.
It is also so much more tangible and permanent than the fleeting electronic message, soon consigned to the cyber-trashbin.
And this, too, impacts on the use - and abuse - of language and, arguably, the precision with which we communicate.
But sentimentality cannot be allowed to rule the day. The world is changing; business models must adapt accordingly.
A spokesman for NZ Post last week pointed out that we are not alone in facing this.
Every country in the world is facing year-on-year falls in mail volumes of 5%.
Further, while profits from Kiwibank and a growing parcel delivery service have to date helped offset revenue losses, that money would be better placed investing in the future.
Increasingly, "snail mail" is being consigned to the past.
And another thing
Readers following Dunedin's Anzac Ave traffic lights saga might be tempted to conclude the fuss is much ado about nothing.
After all, the initial stages of last week's hearing were spent trying to identify exactly what it was supposed to be about.
If the lawyers and presiding judge were at something of a loss in this respect, heaven help the general public.
What was learnt, however, was that it could be a further 12 months before a "redesignation process" - requiring "notification" and "consultation" - was complete.
That makes the court case sound even more like an expensive farce.
